Hi. I´m planning to start a website. I have good content - multimedia included - people to collaborate in postings, and with a clear idea of investing money and time to make it a top in its topic. Obviously I´d like it to have a good ranking at Google, to earn as much as posible revenues, but always with a content-related approach. Getting a top in Google is hard (all of you know that) so instead of starting from zero I´ve had the idea (this is the point of my message) of buying a website that I have seen at google top 10 on that topic/keywords. That website is old, very poor designed, unfrecuently updated and very few pages. But it´s on the top 10...And it has a sub-domain URL like www.domain.com/~name/website.html. My question is: would it be possible to buy that website, transfer it to another domain/hosting and then redesign the whole website and keep that top 10 in Google ? Am I saying a nonsense ? Redirecting via 301 ? What would you do if you see a website like this in the top 10 for your desired keywords and want to take advantage of its good ranking ? Would you consider talking with the webmaster and buying it ? Is it a good idea instead of starting the whole new website from scratch ? Is it technically possible ? Sorry for so many questions in just one message, but I´m really eager to starting the best possible way. If any of you have any idea, just let me know, general or private. I´ll appreciate. And thanks for reading mates... natural_master
Buying an existing domain that is old and has good rankings is a great way to jumpstart your own online marketing efforts. If the website really stinks that bad, then transferring it to a new host and rebuilding it will probably not hurt the ranking at all, and if it does, it will be temporary. If you buy a domain that has good rankings despite it being a bad website, transfer it, build a better website and put some good SEO efforts into it, then it can only improve.